


nothing gory means no glory

by ilgaksu



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M, M/M, Post-The Raven King, The Raven King Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 19:58:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6767995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>You’ve always been shit at letting go, haven’t you? </i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><i>I didn’t ask for you to be here</i>, he says, without turning around. </p><p><i>No, you didn’t</i>, she says, <i>but I make things easier.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	nothing gory means no glory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neenya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neenya/gifts).



> _What do ruined people do? Weird shit._
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> \- “Grief Magic” by Emily Rapp, The Rumpus.

In the dream, it is not Cabeswater-as-is, but Cabeswater-as-was, because -

_You’ve always been shit at letting go, haven’t you?_

_I didn’t ask for you to be here,_ he says, without turning around from his wary steps further and further closer to the rose glade. The petals have all fallen at his feet in a bruised and weary susurration. And he is afraid, because this is the place his mother died, and it’s not the chill of walking over your own grave. It’s tasting the bullet with your own name on it because you put the metal in your own mouth.  

 _No, you didn’t,_ she says, _but I make things easier._ She takes his hand, and he allows it, the way he would only allow it in dreams. Her nails are painted five different colours, the polish chipped like constellations in the night sky of his childhood.

 _I won’t tell Dick if you won’t,_ he says to cover the sweet ache of human contact in his chest, oddly real for all he has never touched her like this in life, but her laugh is familiar and like a mockingbird it flies ahead of them. _What happens in my head, stays in -_

 _We both know that’s not true._ Her voice is light as cappuccino, macchiato, as light as her voice ordering hot drinks on early morning drives in the Pig, leaning over Gansey to talk into the drive thru microphone and Gansey with his eyes closed against all her wonder.

Ronan, relegated to the backseat with Adam (and his freckles, his careful and compact way of sitting, his pale and lovely eyes) often wonders which of them learnt longing first (Gansey or Ronan, Ronan or Gansey, so close it was probably contagious).  

 _Haven’t you got better things to do,_ he bitches without heat. The mist leeches it from his voice and his hand in hers steals her warmth. Absurdly, his teeth are chattering.

 _Dude,_ she says, crouches down beside him when he stops to scoop a choking blanket of petals out of small pool. They weigh heavy and soft and awful in his hands, and he scoops them out faster. His mother died in this place and he can’t see a thing for the fucking flowers. _Haven’t_ you _?_

_You can thank me later, Sargent. Opal likes fruit baskets, if you’re thinking of paying it forward._

_Does she even like fruit,_ Blue answers, a trace of amusement in her voice. She’s wearing fingerless gloves now, lumpy and knitted from orange glitter wool. She takes them off to help him clear the pool, water and dead petals slicking her wrists.

_She’ll eat the basket. Nice gloves, by the way. Your mom make them for you?_

_Ronan, do you really want to make ‘your mom’ jokes here?_ Blue asks, half-angry, half-resigned. Her eyes are oddly gentle, and Ronan suspects he hasn’t dreamt her now: that this is really Blue. He would have thought of the strawberry hair clips, but he would never have thought of that. Even a dreamer’s imagination can only stretch so far. Ronan swallows around a sudden weight, and stares at the mostly cleared pool. He can see their reflections in it, between the last of the petals; Blue and Ronan, Ronan and Blue, only in their reflections they are laughing and Ronan’s sure as hell not laughing right now. Ronan Lynch is eighteen years old, and an orphan, and he never lies.  

 _No,_ he says, _no, I don’t. How’s Venezuela?_

_We’re in Romania now. Gansey’s family own a first edition of Dracula or something. He’s very excited._

Ronan snorts. _Of course they do._ This delay - between closing his eyes and dreaming up what he wants - is pronounced, and the awareness of it makes him nervous, makes Blue nervous, as though she can taste it. It has been months since the forest bled, but Ronan’s had years to hone his fear on the whetstone of his own teeth; it tastes like copper and mulch and being unmade, but Ronan wonders if the heart in her mouth tastes different.  

 _Don’t worry, I’ll pull out in time,_ he says, deadpan, and she shoves him so hard he topples over, his hand plunging into the water of the pool as he tries to right his balance. It looks pale and dead, a corpse-hand underwater, and he yanks it out of the water as fast as he can. She’s staring at him, wide-eyed, bird-eyed.

 _I’m not gonna apologise,_ she says, and it sounds like apologising. It also sounds like a reprimand.

 _Neither am I,_ he says, and wipes his hand on her hoodie where it hangs tied around her waist. When she shoves him this time, she angles it so he hits the grass.

They have always been at a stalemate, barbed wire and No Man’s Land and a vague uneasy truce like snow, blanketing without forgetting. One day, when they’re sat in the same room again, years from now, along the tug of one thread of possibility, they might learn to call it compromise. For now, Ronan rolls to his feet and climbs up the nearest tree, drapes himself along branches never built to support his weight in life and looks down between the dead of them.

 _Don’t follow me, maggot,_ he says, ignores Blue’s reply, throws one arm over his eyes and leaves one hand wrapped around a branch and dreams. He builds a thousand memories of hospital waiting rooms, the scent of childhood bonfires and cinnamon and Aurora’s perfume as she leant in to clean skinned knees, the dark line of the stitches against the flint of Blue’s wounded eyes. He thinks _I want her to choose what she carries with her._ When he hears Blue humming something that sounds like Gwenllian spat it out, he braids it in instead of telling her to shut up.

He opens his eyes, and it’s hanging from the tree branch like some bizarre fruit. Easiest trick in the book. He snags it off and jumps down.

 _Don’t say I never give you anything,_ he tells Blue, and throws it at her. He watches her catch it and then finds he can’t watch her look at it properly for the first time; he crouches down by the side of the pool again. His reflection is still laughing. He waits, coiled.

 _Face cream,_ she says slowly, and he tenses. _You gave me face cream._

 _That scar will take years to heal without it,_ he says, _That’ll speed it up. If you want. You don't. It's not._ He tucks his fingers underneath the bracelets on his wrist to brush against scars that make strangers glance askance at him when he hands over his credit card in the grocery store. It’s easier to inspire fear than love, and it’s so, so much easier to inspire pity. _I think it’s your fucking face but I thought the choice mattered._

That’s what Adam told him this morning, stood in his room at Harvard and Ronan lingering, hesitating over the drive back to Virginia alone. _It’s not about taking the choice, Lynch. It’s about knowing there’s one._

 _Exit strategies,_ Blue murmurs. She’s standing behind him now, and he can’t turn yet to see what she looks like. Her reflection is no fucking help. Abruptly, she laughs, and her reflection and her voice match for a jarring moment. He feels her weight shift and settle and she sits beside him.

Slowly, she puts her head on his shoulder. Slowly, he lets her.

_Thank you._

Ronan doesn’t try and look at her face still. He breathes in how she smells, odd and sweet and familiar. He reaches out to roughly rub his knuckles against her scalp.

 _Piss off back to Romania, maggot,_ he says, voice low, _He’s probably missing you._ He closes his eyes and listens for what’s left of the leaves.

 _Not just me,_ she says. When he opens his eyes, he’s alone in the Barns and smiling.


End file.
